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06 Sept 2025
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06 Sept 2025
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Donegal manager Declan Bonner plays in goals for Na Rossa
Donegal team boss Declan Bonner is still playing club football regularly at the tender age of 54 - and last weekend more than played his part as his beloved Na Rossa qualified for the Donegal Junior Football Championship semi-finals.
He he pulled off a stunning double save to help his club oust hotly fancied Urris in a thrilling quarter-final which went to extra time last weekend.
Asked about lining out for his beloved club he said it was “everything to me”.
Indeed, that late double save was “Cluxtonesque”.
“I was thinking, at 54 I don’t need this," he said.
“Lucky enough I got a hand to it but this is a great victory for us as we are a very small club and have lost a few teams to emigration.
“There are four lads that should be coming back next week and we are into the semi-finals and we never expected this at all”.
Bonner first lined out for his beloved Na Rossa first as a 14-year-old in 1977.
“We won a Junior Championship back in 1982 and I was 16 and my three brothers, Sean Michael and Donal were also on that team.
‘We played all our underage football with Rosses Rovers and then we formed our own club and we got a lot of families moving back to Leitir in the late 1980s and early 1990 and we had two senior teams.
“Back in 1989 I was player manager of the senior team that won the Intermediate Championship and was in the States in 1988 and I was just 23.
“We won the Intermediate again in 1999 and I was playing as well as continuing as Donegal senior manager”.
So what drives him?
“it is for the love of the game, for the pride of the parish and it is just great to pull on the jersey and I am also chairman of the club for the past six years.
“But we have lost so many families since the downturn and we have around two teams abroad."
They have some good players and Aidan McHugh played soccer for Keadue earlier in the day.
“We are trying to open a new pitch next year and it is a matter of keeping the club going."
Currently, they have no underage teams but he they "will battle on to compete."
Indeed!
The incident has been reported to gardaí
Australian and New Zealand tour operators at Lough Eske Castle, with Viktoria Albrecht, Tourism Ireland (back, third left)
Uisce Éireann says the work is part of the National Leakage Reduction Programme
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